Culture

The higher the number of plant and bird species in a region, the healthier the people who live there. This was found by a new study published in Landscape and Urban Planning and led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F) and the Christian Albrechts University (CAU) in Kiel. The researchers found that, in particular, mental health and higher species diversity are positively related, whereas a similar relationship between plant or bird species and physical health could not be proven.

The study led by researchers from iDiv, SBiK-F and CAU provides an analysis of the relationship between biodiversity and human health in Germany. The scientists used data on mental and physical health provided by the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), including almost 15,000 households and about 30,000 persons. As indicators for species diversity, they used estimates on species richness of plants and birds as well as on bird abundance.

People are healthier in regions with more plant and bird species

The results of the study show better mental health of the people living in regions with higher plant and bird diversity. "A person living in a region with many different plant and bird species is, in average, feeling mentally better than a person living in a region with lower species diversity," said first author Joel Methorst, former doctoral researcher at iDiv, SBiK-F and Goethe University Frankfurt and now researcher at Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg. Furthermore, a positive relation of parks and green spaces in the neighbourhood and mental health was observed - the closer the park, the better.

Contrary to the researchers' expectation, there seems to be no relationship between bird abundance and mental health. „This could be due to the fact that many abundant bird species such as pigeons, seagulls and crows are oftentimes not very popular," explained Joel Methorst.

Indirect effects of biodiversity on human health

The researchers were not able to show a significant relationship between species diversity and physical health. Instead, the relationship could be more indirect: People who enjoy outdoor physical activity to experience plants and birds in their natural environment can improve their health with this activity.

However, positive effects are not only generated by the direct experience of biodiversity, for example a walk in the park or a visit to a garden. Environments with higher plant and bird species richness can also have indirect positive effects on human health as greater species diversity oftentimes correlates with better environmental conditions.

Nature conservation as a means to improve health

The researchers were not able to establish causal links between the number of species and mental or physical health. For this, data for different time periods would be required. To date, sufficient time series data on biodiversity in Germany is not available.

Nonetheless, valuable conclusions can be drawn from this study. "Our results show that nature conservation can, indeed, be understood as a means to promote human health," said senior author Prof Katrin Rehdanz from CAU. "This is particularly relevant for urban planning and management of green spaces. Here, investing in biodiversity can promote the health of the urban population."

Research led by Michigan Medicine's Scleroderma Program and published in Arthritis & Rheumatology found that tocilizumab, a FDA-approved anti-inflammatory drug used to combat rheumatoid arthritis, can prevent lung disease in patients with systemic sclerosis if detected early enough in the disease course.

Systemic sclerosis is an autoimmune disease and the most serious form of scleroderma, the tightening and thickening of the skin. It can affect internal organs and lung disease is its leading cause of death, according to study author Dinesh Khanna, M.B.B.S., M.Sc., director of Michigan Medicine's Scleroderma Program.

"Some people have minimal lung disease; some people have life-threatening disease. The amount of lung scarring plays a major factor in those health outcomes," says Khanna. "When used in patients early in their disease course, those that usually have had the disease five years or less, our study found that tocilizumab preserved lung function over the course of 48 weeks."

When left undiagnosed and untreated, patients with systemic sclerosis can suffer a rapid decline in lung function. And unfortunately, this lung disease is irreversible.

Khanna's research, referred to as the focuSSced trial, was a phase 3, randomized placebo-controlled trial seeking to understand the impact of tocilizumab on lung function preservation in patients with mild, moderate and severe amounts of lung scarring.

"We also wanted to learn more about who would benefit the most from tocilizumab intervention," says study author David Roofeh, M.D., a new member of Michigan Medicine's Scleroderma Program. "Surprisingly, it didn't matter how much lung scarring the patient had or what percentage of the lung was involved in this population. They all reacted the same."

The research team found that of the 210 trial participants, tocilizumab treatment over the course of 48 weeks, compared to the placebo, stabilized forced vital capacity, which is the total amount of air exhaled during forced breathing.

According to Roofeh, this test, the FVC test, is the most important measurement of lung function.

Khanna and Roofeh's work suggests there's a window of opportunity for a select group of patients with systemic sclerosis where the anti-inflammatory drug can halt or prevent irreversible lung damage.

And the FDA agrees, just recently approving tocilizumab for slowing the rate of decline in lung function in adult patients with systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease. However, more research is needed to better understand this complex illness.

"This cohort of patients was carefully selected to represent those with highly inflammatory disease characteristics. More research is needed in clarifying if other patient demographics may respond to this type of therapy, perhaps earlier in the disease process," says Khanna. "Careful delineation of which patient and disease factors predict response may help improve disease outcomes for more than the select population studied here."

When asked what Khanna and Roofeh hope other health care providers take away from their work, the call was clear: screen, diagnose and treat patients early.

"Historically, a provider would wait to treat someone until they showed signs of illness," says Khanna. "I hope this data suggests a possible paradigm shift in terms of treatment for these patients, providing an option of early detection and secondary-prevention, identifying the disease in the subclinical state, rather than later trying to reduce the impact of clinically significant disease."

A team of neurobiologists at the Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université) has just shown that within a population of rats it can predict which will become cocaine addicts. One of the criteria for addiction in rats is the compulsive search for a drug despite its negative consequences. Scientists observed abnormal activity in a specific region of the brain, the subthalamic nucleus, only in future addicted individuals, and did so before they were exposed to 'punishment' associated with the seeking for the drug. These results, which have just been published online by PNAS, also indicate that it is possible to reduce this compulsive cocaine-seeking behaviour in rats by stimulating the subthalamic nucleus, confirming its interest as a target in the treatment of addiction.

"SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV are highly similar genetically, generate a homologous repertoire of viral proteins, and use the same receptor to infect human cells. However, despite these similarities, there are also important differences between the two viruses", says Ronald Dijkman from the Institute for Infectious Diseases (IFIK) at the University of Bern. For example, SARS-CoV infection is characterized by severe disease and inflammation in the lower respiratory tract and infected individuals are only contagious after the onset of symptoms, making it easier to identify and interrupt infection chains.

In contrast, SARS-CoV-2 preferentially replicates in the upper airways (nasal cavity, pharynx, trachea) and can be efficiently transmitted from one individual to another before the appearance of disease symptoms. Moreover, the outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infection varies widely from person to person, and can manifest as asymptomatic, mild, or severe disease. Older people as well as individuals with certain underlying medical conditions (heart conditions, diabetes, cancer) are at greater risk of developing severe illness, which is often associated with infection of lower respiratory tissues, high levels of inflammation, and lung failure.

Temperature is key

To better understand why infections with SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 result in such different clinical outcomes, researchers from the University of Bern used specialized human airway cell cultures to investigate the impact of respiratory tract temperatures on SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 replication. The cells originate from human samples and mimic the complexity of the cells found in the respiratory tract. They grow in special containers, are nourished from the bottom side and are exposed to air on the top side, just like the cells in the human trachea. The cultures also make mucus and have cilia that beat very quickly. "Because the organization of these cells greatly resembles the cells found in human tissues, they are a relevant system that can be used in a laboratory to study respiratory viruses", Dijkman explains.

The researchers have now used this existing model for the first time to study the effects of respiratory temperatures on SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 replication. They found that temperature plays an important role as SARS-CoV-2 preferred to replicate at temperatures typically found in the upper airways (33°C). Colder incubation temperatures allowed the virus to replicate faster and to a higher extent than when infections were carried out at 37°C to mimic the lower lung environment. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, replication of SARS-CoV was not impacted by different incubation temperatures. The experiments were conducted both in the high security laboratory of the IVI in Mittelhäusern and in the biosafety laboratory of the Institute for Infectious Diseases (IFIK) at the University of Bern in the building of sitem-insel, the Swiss Institute for Translational Medicine and Entrepreneurship.

Temperature also influences the response from the epithelium

The team also analyzed which genes are turned on and off after infection with SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 to understand how cells from the human respiratory tract respond to infection and which innate immune programs are activated. The innate immune system is our body's "first line of defense" against invading pathogens and is crucial not only to contain the invader, but also to teach other branches of the immune system how to react appropriately.

When mimicking the conditions found in the upper airways (33°C), the team found that infection with SARS-CoV-2 did not stimulate the innate immune response within these cells as strongly as it did when they mimicked conditions found in the lower respiratory tract (37°C). "Since the strength of the innate immune response can directly influence the degree of viral replication, this may help explain why SARS-CoV-2 replicated more efficiently at lower temperatures", says Dijkman. Although mounting a strong innate immune response against the virus is generally beneficial, it is important to note that in some cases the innate immune response can become overactivated. This in turn can be detrimental to the infected individual, as high levels of inflammation can also induce tissue damage and accelerate disease progression - a phenomenon that is often seen in patients suffering from severe COVID19.

"The detailed analysis of SARS-CoV-2 replication and the temperature-induced changes in the host innate immune defense mechanisms helps explain why SARS-CoV-2 replicates so well in the upper respiratory tract, and is perhaps why SARS-CoV-2 exhibits higher human-to-human transmissibility than SARS-CoV", Dijkman explains.

Important knowledge to fight coronavirus infections

The use of this authentic cell culture model in a controlled laboratory setting proved to accurately reflect the different behavior of two similar viruses in the context of a pandemic. "This unique system provides insight into the molecular battle that occurs between virus and host during an infection and underscores the importance of subtle changes in the virus-host microenvironment that may impact virus replication and propagation", says Dijkman. Understanding which key players are involved in this process, and whether they favor the host or virus, opens new opportunities for the establishment of highly targeted intervention strategies and the development of novel pharmaceutical compounds that will help combat coronavirus infections.

Companies could be hiring that bad boss on purpose. According to new research in the Journal of Business Ethics, the "dark" personality traits - questionable ethical standards, narcissistic tendencies - that make a boss bad also make that person much more likely to go along with manipulating earnings and may be the reason they got the job in the first place.

Co-authors Nick Seybert (University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business), Ling Harris (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Scott Jackson (University of South Carolina) and Joel Owens (Portland State University) studied the process of hiring executive management accounting candidates and its relation to the company's earnings management practices - that is, a company's tendency to inflate its income. Through several studies, they found that when a company needed to report earnings aggressively, experienced executives and recruiters tended to recommend hiring candidates with dark personality traits over candidates who sought input from others and believed in strong ethical foundations.

"Dark personality traits are often framed as an accidental byproduct of selecting managers who fit the stereotype of a strong leader," says Seybert, an accounting professor. "However, our research found that this is often no accident."

The research for "Recruiting Dark Personalities for Earnings Management" involved three experiments in which different actions were measured. In one experiment, for example, the participants were specifically asked to rate the candidates based on dimensions such as the candidate's ability to manage people and relationships. The only dimension in which candidates with dark personalities were rated higher than their counterparts was in manipulation of ethical boundaries.

"A lot of people assume that these managers must have great self-presentation, promotion, people skills, or confidence" Seybert says. "But our research shows otherwise."

The basic idea behind this research is that these dark personalities can fulfill a specific nefarious purpose, says Seybert. When companies feel as though they need to inflate their earnings, people with dark personalities are more likely to get placed into positions of power to do exactly that. This results in candidates with potentially better management, organizational, and people skills being passed over for management jobs.

Seybert and his colleagues' research is unique in that they recruited experienced executives and executive recruiters to evaluate the candidates in order to simulate the real business hiring environment.

"Very, very few prior studies involved people who have experience recruiting for prior jobs," says Seybert. "Our research involved a lot of time-consuming and creative searching to find the right participants."

Overall, Seybert says he hopes that this research will help candidates better evaluate companies during their job search. "The best takeaway for employees is to avoid companies that might have use for managers with dark personalities, and not to expect support from higher-ups when this is the case. The company might have picked a bad boss on purpose."

ATLANTA -- Assisted living communities can improve the quality of life for residents with dementia by approaching them as individuals and attempting to include all residents in activities, according to a study led by a Georgia State University gerontology researcher.

The typical "activity programming" at many assisted living residences can leave people with dementia on the sidelines, according to the study, "Meaningful Engagement Among Assisted Living Residents With Dementia: Successful Approaches," published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology.

The study found that the keys to improving quality of life for residents with dementia are getting to know them as individuals, meeting people "where they are," being in the moment with people and viewing all interactions with residents as opportunities to connect.

The study, based on interviews and observational visits conducted in 2019, offers initial findings as part of a five-year project being funded by the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health.

"COVID-19 highlights the importance of meaningful engagement for everyone, especially for persons living with dementia," said Candace Kemp, a professor at Georgia State University's Gerontology Institute and principle investigator of the study. "Doing things that are enjoyable and being engaged to the extent possible and desirable are significant for quality of life and quality of care."

Researchers conducted interviews and observations involving 33 assisted living residents with varying types of dementia and levels of functional ability. They represent a diversity of gender, age, race and ethnicity and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The researchers found that actively "listening and observing verbal and non-verbal cues were keys to connecting and meeting residents on their own terms." The researchers urged caregivers to try to include all residents in activities and not to assume that people with dementia can't benefit from activities simply because they may not be able to respond in the same way as other residents.

The research has implications in the COVID-19 era, which has limited visits by family and friends at many assisted living facilities and restricted group activities and gathering for meals. A greater focus on meaningful engagement with residents "holds promise for offsetting the negative effects of social distancing for residents and for reducing care partner strain," the researchers wrote.

ANN ARBOR--By April last year, up to 28 free-standing alternate care sites ranging in size from 50 to 3,000 beds were underway or finished in the U.S.--the Michigan Medicine Field Hospital among them.

This 500-bed alternate care site was planned and construction underway from March through May to meet the estimated surge in COVID-19 patients, expected to overrun hospitals nationwide and in Michigan. Sue Anne Bell, assistant professor of nursing and a disaster expert, was one of the field hospital's five-member leadership team.

Bell and her colleagues from Michigan Medicine recently published a study in Prehospital and Disaster Medicine about lessons learned from that experience.

The Michigan Medicine Field Hospital was planned to be a step-down care facility where the least ill COVID-19 patients could be safely treated prior to discharge. The idea was to increase bed capacity for more acutely ill patients in the remaining Michigan Medicine hospitals. The majority of field hospitals constructed for COVID patients in the U.S. weren't called into service, including the Michigan Medicine facility.

Planning for the Michigan Medicine Field Hospital was organized into six units: personnel and labor; security; clinical operations; logistics and supply; planning and training; and communications.

"The command structure worked really well," Bell said. "There was a clear reporting structure that made communication among teams straightforward, which was really important given both the urgency of the situation and later the uncertainty."

Another strength was the team's commitment.

"This was all hands on deck to get the field hospital in place as quickly as possible in order to meet the needs of the community," Bell said.

The team visited indoor athletic facilities and dormitories near the hospital, ultimately selecting the new 73,000-square-foot indoor track and performance facility, a 12-minute drive from the main hospital. A draft layout was completed in two days of a 519-bed facility, including a 20-bed higher acuity area for patients requiring a transfer back to Michigan Medicine. The goal was to provide the highest level of comprehensive care possible in a temporary setting, and many of the comforts of traditional hospital stays (visitors, television) weren't possible due to COVID transmission risks.

"They were not really well suited to being a full substitute for acute hospital care of COVID patients, because it was difficult to discern early in the progression of the disease which patients might need ICU care or were at risk of decompensating quickly, and which ones were relatively stable and could be cared for safely in a field hospital setting," said study co-author Keith Dickey, chief strategy officer for Michigan Medicine.

Allocating staffing and personal protective equipment in the convalescent vs. acute care settings was challenging. Because of the nature of COVID, many of the patients would be older adults with preexisting conditions. Decision-making revolved around how to meet the physical therapy and physical medicine and rehabilitation needs of these patients, and PPE needed for those staff.

Sourcing supplies was also challenging, as shortages existed around the country and worldwide, which resulted in massive regional and national competition for supplies.

"Just as we were trying to order cots or IV poles in a large volume, so were other places around the country," Bell said. "Creating a plan for sourcing those resources in the event of a future field hospital is a consideration."

Another challenge was communication at state and federal levels.

"There was so much going on across the country, that trying to get clear information was a challenge, as modeling was shifting and hotspots were emerging," Bell said.

One major advantage of an academic medical center-run facility was physician staffing capacity. Academic physicians are not generally 100% clinical, and Michigan Medicine physicians and resident trainees could provide extra clinical capacity. Tapping into staff with prior military and disaster experience was also critical.

While the experience was specific to COVID-19, much of what was learned is generalizable to other instances requiring a field hospital.

"But what we have now is a clear plan for how we will implement a field hospital in the future," Bell said. "And with that we can change and improve that plan using our baseline knowledge from this experience."

But the study also shows for the first time that performance may be improved by using super recognisers - people who are very skilled at recognising faces. It also reveals that masks do make recognising someone's emotions more difficult.

There are many questions surrounding face masks and the impact that masks will have on face identification. Can we recognise the faces of people who we know well if they are wearing a mask? And, relevant to policing and security scenarios or a supermarket ID check, can an unfamiliar face be recognized across images if it is masked? And how do masks impact our ability to recognize a person's emotions?

Dr Noyes is Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology and conducted the study, published by the Royal Society, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Greenwich, University of Reading, and University of Lincoln. A leading expert in the field, Dr Noyes was intrigued what the enforced wearing of masks due to COVID-19 would have on facial recognition.

The study consisted of three experiments which tested recognition of familiar faces, recognition of an unfamiliar face (comparing images, aka face matching), and emotion recognition. The researchers compared face recognition and emotion recognition for faces with no concealment, faces in masks, and faces in sunglasses - something far more commonplace than masks and often a matter of choice rather than necessity.

In the first experiment, participants were presented with pairs of famous faces, and were asked to decide if the images were of the same person or two different people.

"People are typically very good at identifying the faces of people they know well," says Dr Noyes. "However, we found that face masks reduced accuracy on this task. There was no difference in accuracy for faces in masks compared to faces in sunglasses. Accuracy on the familiar face recognition task remained high - around 90% - even for faces in masks.

"Face comparisons are much more difficult if the faces are unknown to the identifier, but it is this task which mimics what can happen in many security scenarios. In the unfamiliar face comparison task, both masks and sunglasses reduced identification accuracy. Masks impaired performance the most, but only a little more than sunglasses." This difference in recognition was at only around 3%.

A group of people who were known to be 'super recognisers' also took part in the task. Super recognisers have an exceptional natural ability for recognising a face, an ability that only 2% of the population have.

Super recognisers outperformed typical observers for unconcealed faces, faces in masks, and faces in sunglasses, showing that they still outperform typical observers even when looking at concealed faces. This study is the first to test the performance of super recognisers for faces in masks.

What about the recognition of a person's emotional expressions? Participants in the study viewed face images and were asked to decide which emotion had been displayed (see Fig 2).

"The effect of masks on emotion categorization was more complex than the results for the recognition task," Dr Noyes explains. "The emotions 'happiness', 'disgust' and 'surprise' were particularly difficult to recognise when the faces were in masks, but the recognition of the emotions 'anger' and 'fear' were impaired by both masks and sunglasses."

Dr Noyes continues, "The results of the study show that the lower half of the face is important for face identification and emotion recognition. It's not all in the eyes!"

Research conducted in U.S. national parks has focused largely on five iconic parks, with more than a third of academic papers focused on Yellowstone National Park, researchers from North Carolina State University found in a new analysis.

They also found that the number of publications per year increased during the 1990s and 2000s, but has dropped since 2013. The findings, published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, were drawn from an analysis of nearly 7,000 published, peer-reviewed studies conducted at U.S. designated national parks since 1970.

"Looking at the data was a surprise and perhaps a wake-up call," said the study's lead author Jelena Vukomanovic, assistant professor of parks, recreation and tourism management at NC State. "Overall, there's more research being published than ever before, but we're actually seeing a decline in publications of research conducted in the national parks."

In the study, researchers used the Web of Science database to analyze academic journal articles on national parks published between 1970 and 2018. While the National Park Service manages more than 400 properties including battlefields and national seashores, the researchers focused on 59 designated national parks. They excluded research on three newly established parks, and did not include reports published outside of peer-reviewed journals.

"National parks are large, relatively intact natural areas that serve conservation objectives and provide aesthetic and other connections between people and nature," Vukomanovic said. "We wanted to look at what research was being conducted in national parks and what kind of biases there might be in our understanding of these unique and special places."

They found more than half of all studies since 1970 have focused on five national parks - the parks that see the greatest number of visitors per year. Yellowstone accounted for 36.2% of studies; the Everglades represented 6.8%; Great Smoky Mountains accounted for 6.2%; Glacier represented 5.6%; and Yosemite was at 5.3%.

"We need to understand that this is the context behind the conclusions we come to about our landscapes," said study co-author Josh Randall, graduate student in parks, recreation and tourism management at NC State. "Many of the findings - and their management implications - that we may apply broadly come from a small number of parks."

The location of parks near research universities wasn't necessarily linked to the amount of published research on them.

"We know that well-funded researchers can travel to interesting places that have unique phenomena," Vukomanovic said. "We found some relatively understudied parks are close - within a day trip distance - from a lot of research universities. This is a call for future work on the drivers of research, which could help both park and university administrators identify and address barriers."

More than half of studies were conducted in parks in northwestern forested mountains. Seventeen percent of studies were done in North American deserts, 10% were in eastern temperate forests, tropical wet forests represented 7% of studies and marine west coast forests were at 6%.

"The national parks of the east represent extraordinary biodiversity and cultural heritage," Vukomanovic said. "How can we bolster research activity there?"

Life sciences research - and ecology and evolutionary biology studies in particular - made up the majority of park research, representing 60% of total publications.

Physical sciences and mathematics research made up 25% of studies, with the largest share of research in that field going to the earth sciences. Social and behavioral science research made up 8% of studies; engineering made up 3%; and education and multidisciplinary research made up 3%. The arts and humanities represented less than 1% of total research.

Researchers said availability of funding could be playing a role in the decline in publications per year since 2013, and should be studied further.

Federal agencies in the United States was the most commonly cited source of research funding. Notably, more than a quarter of research funding sources were based international internationally.

"These are the world's living laboratories," Vukomanovic said. "This interest from international sources speaks to the fact that everyone benefits from the research and knowledge that's being garnered at the national parks. There could be opportunities for that to grow. How can we make it easier for international collaborators to work in national parks?"

Researchers said increasing availability of data from the national parks could spur research.
"This analysis offers a comprehensive overview that can be built on to shape future work, to identify and address research gaps and determine funding priorities," Vukomanovic said. "It's a blueprint to consider for the future."

JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINE HELPS FIND CAUSE OF GUILLAIN-BARRE SYNDROME OUTBREAK IN PERU

Media Contact: Michel Morris, melben1@jhmi.edu

In the spring of 2019, Peruvian neurologists saw a significant increase in the number of patients with Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS). This rare disorder occurs when a person's immune system damages the nerves, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis. Although GBS typically only affects 3,000 - 6,000 people annually in the United States (or about 1 in 100,000), Peruvian doctors documented hundreds of cases between May and July 2019 and deemed it an outbreak.

A multinational team of GBS experts collaborated with Peruvian neurologists led by Ana Ramos from the Hospital Cayetano Heredia in Lima to clarify the causes of the outbreak and identify the culprit. Among the members of the international team was Carlos Pardo, M.D., a neurology professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Pardo and other Johns Hopkins Medicine neurologists, microbiologists and computational biologists helped Peruvian neurologists identify the cause to be a common diarrheal infection by bacteria called Campylobacter jejuni. The team's findings are reported in the March 2021 issue of the journal Neurology, Neuroimmunology and Neuroinflammation.

While a third of GBS patients recover completely, another third may be permanently left with significant muscle impairment or mobility problems.

"It is a major problem for Peru's public health system," says Pardo. "Just having even 10 to 20 patients can overwhelm a system. They were seeing hundreds of cases in just over a few months."

The multinational team identified the cause of the outbreak by investigating blood, feces and spinal fluid samples from patients with GBS. The group knew that a bacterial infection was likely to be the initial trigger, but needed to identify the specific type so that it could be appropriately controlled.

Pardo and his team used genetic and molecular tools to identify the strain of bacteria in the samples. They found that it was not a new bacterium, but one associated with other GBS outbreaks in South America and China called Campylobacter jejuni. While trying to fight the bacteria, a patient's immune system can mistakenly attack the nervous system as well, resulting in GBS.

Once the researchers pinpointed the responsible bacterial strain, they were able to suggest potential treatments, such as vaccines and antibiotics, best suited for C. jejuni. Public health officials also were able to target measures to stop the bacteria from contaminating Peru's food and water supplies.

Pardo is available for interviews.

HEART DISEASE GAINING ON CANCER AS A MAJOR CAUSE OF DEATH IN YOUNG WOMEN, SAY RESEARCHERS

Media Contact: Brian H. Waters, bwaters3@Jhmi.edu

It's no secret that women tend to put the health of others before their own, especially those who must care for children, manage a household, work full time and shoulder other responsibilities. So, it may not be surprising that a recent nationwide study by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers revealed women younger than 65 are dying from heart disease at an increased rate compared with past years.

"Young women in the United States are becoming less healthy, which is now reversing prior improvements seen in heart disease deaths for the gender," says Erin Michos M.D., M.H.S., director of women's cardiovascular health and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "In a previous study in December 2018, we showed that more attention should be paid to the health of young women, particularly those with the risk factors that contribute to heart disease."

"Our latest research confirms that need still exists," she says.

In the new study -- an analysis of U.S. death certificates between 1999 and 2018 from a national database -- Michos and her colleagues compared heart disease and cancer deaths in women under 65. Their findings were reported Feb. 8, 2021, in the European Heart Journal - Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes.

The researchers found that overall during the 10-year study period, cancer was the most prevalent cause of premature death in women under 65 -- slightly more than twice as much as heart disease. However, the overall cancer mortality rate (age adjusted) for women under 65 decreased from 62 to 45 deaths per 100,000 people while the overall heart disease mortality rate (age adjusted) dropped from 29 to 23 deaths per 100,000.

Another finding from the study was that the annual percentage change (APC) in age-adjusted mortality rates for cancer declined year after year during the study period, while it increased for heart disease in two specific groups from 2010 to 2018: women 25 to 34 (2.2%) and women 55 to 64 (0.5%). The APCs rose significantly after 2008 for women living in the midwestern United States, medium and small metropolitan areas, and rural areas. Additionally, APCs were found to have increased for white women from 2009 to 2013 and for Native American women from 2009 to 2018.

Finally, the researchers determined the mortality gap between cancer and heart disease in women under 65 narrowed from a mortality rate (age adjusted) of 33 deaths per 100,000 in 1999 to 23 deaths per 100,000 in 2018.

Compounding the problem of premature death from heart disease in women under 65, say the researchers, is the commonly held misconception that women are not at risk for heart disease before menopause. But in fact, statistics show one-third of all heart issues in women occur before age 65.

Another major factor -- the gender gap in cardiac disease care -- was revealed in the 2018 study by Michos and her colleagues.

"We showed that women were not getting the same level of care as men, and they feel that way too. Women are more likely to report communication problems with health care providers and dissatisfaction with their health care experience, and we think this contributes to the disparities that we see when it comes to getting preventive and other treatment for cardiovascular disease," said Michos after the 2018 study was published.

Along with advocating for equal health care, Michos recommends that women combat the risk of premature cardiac death by eating a healthy and balanced diet, getting regular physical activity, not smoking, and maintaining healthy blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol level and body weight.

Michos is available for interviews.

STUDY: DOCTORS 'OVERUSING' COSTLY, RISKIER METHOD FOR CLEARING CLOGGED OR BLOCKED VESSELS

Media Contact: Michael E. Newman, mnewma25@jhmi.edu

In a recent study reviewing Medicare claims data from 2019 for nearly 59,000 patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD), a Johns Hopkins Medicine research team provides statistical evidence that one method for restoring blood flow to clogged or completely blocked vessels is being overused or inappropriately used in the United States. This occurs, the researchers say, even though the procedure has not been shown in clinical studies to be more effective than two other less-expensive, less-risky surgical methods.

The findings were reported March 22, 2021, in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions.

"We wanted to characterize physician practice patterns in treating PAD and determine if the therapy in question, atherectomy, was being used appropriately when compared to the use of balloon angioplasty, stents or a combination of angioplasty and stents," says study lead author Caitlin Hicks, M.D., associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "What we discovered is that although there is a wide distribution of practices across the nation for the use of atherectomies and only slightly more than half of PVIs [peripheral vascular interventions] performed in 2019 relied on the technique, atherectomy accounted for 90% of all Medicare PVI payments."

Atherectomy is one of the methods that clinicians use to remove plaque (the buildup of fat, cholesterol, calcium and other substances found in the blood) from blood vessels that have become narrowed or blocked. Unlike balloon angioplasties and stents that push plaque into the vessel wall to open the passageway, the atherectomy cuts it out.

However, clinical studies have never demonstrated that atherectomies are any more effective in treating PAD than angioplasties, stents or a combination of the two. Other studies have suggested that atherectomy increases the risk of distal embolization, in which a piece of plaque breaks free of a vessel and travels to the legs, dangerously reducing blood flow to the feet.

For the period Jan. 1 - Dec. 31, 2019, the Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers reviewed Medicare fee-for-service claims for 58,552 U.S. patients who received elective PVI -- atherectomy, angioplasty or stenting -- for the first time. Patients were characterized for their demographics -- including age, sex, race and ZIP code of residence -- as well as their reason for getting PVI -- including claudication (pain or cramping in the lower leg due to reduced blood flow) and chronic limb-threatening ischemia (inadequate blood supply to a leg that causes pain at rest or leads to gangrene). Histories of other conditions, such as kidney disease and diabetes, and lifestyle behaviors, such as smoking, also were noted.

Medicare claims for 1,627 doctors who performed PVIs on 10 or more patients during 2019 were reviewed in the study. The researchers documented a number of physician characteristics, including sex, years since graduation from medical school, primary specialty, census region of practice, population density of practice location, number of patients treated for PAD, and the type of medical facility in which care was primarily given.

Analysis of the data showed that during the study period, 31,476 (53.8%) of patients received atherectomies as their PVI. For age and sex, the numbers of atherectomies and non-atherectomies were approximately the same. However, the researchers found that atherectomies were performed more frequently on Black or Hispanic patients, those with claudication as their reason for treatment, and people living in urban settings and in the southern United States.

Physician use of atherectomies ranged from 0% (never used) to 100% (always used), with the latter being the case for 133 clinicians -- nearly 10% of the total studied. Men were more likely to use atherectomies, as were doctors in practice for more than 20 years, cardiologists and radiologists, and those who practiced in regions with a higher median Medicare-allowed payment for PVIs per patient.

Additionally, Hicks says, physicians who worked in ambulatory surgical centers or office-based laboratories used atherectomy seven times more often than physicians who worked primarily in controlled facilities such as hospitals.

Overall, nearly $267 million was reimbursed by Medicare for PVIs performed in 2019. Of this, approximately $241 million -- a resounding 90.2% -- was for atherectomies.

"We feel that these numbers -- especially when there is no solid evidence that atherectomies treat PAD any more effectively than angioplasty, stents or a combination of angioplasty and stents -- suggest there is potential overuse of atherectomies in certain situations," says Hicks. "This poses a high health care burden and should be addressed with professional guidelines for more appropriate use of the procedure."

Hicks is available for interviews.

SAN ANTONIO (March 31, 2021) -- Insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea have increased dramatically among active-duty military members over a 14-year period, 2005 through 2019.

Insomnia increased 45-fold and sleep apnea went up more than 30-fold, according to a study led by The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio).

The study found that the most likely military member to be diagnosed with either sleep disorder was married, male, white, a higher-ranking enlisted Army service member and age 40 or older.

The researchers compared medical codes that represent diagnosis of sleep apnea or insomnia in active-duty Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force personnel. No medical code data was available for the Coast Guard or for the Space Force, which was established in December 2019.

"Other studies have been conducted in the past, but those were based more on self-reported surveys or focused on a single branch of the military. No one has studied these sleep disorders in multiple branches of the military before, based on universally used diagnostic medical codes from health records," said principal investigator Vincent Mysliwiec, MD.

Dr. Mysliwiec is a sleep medicine physician and professor of research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UT Health San Antonio, and a retired U.S. Army colonel.

"The most surprising result was that military members in the Army had the highest rates of obstructive sleep apnea and insomnia diagnoses. These findings are concerning because service members across the military branches are otherwise healthy and have similar physical requirements. Their sleep disorders developed and were diagnosed while they were in the military," Dr. Mysliwiec said.

Lower rate seen in women

Another finding was that women were diagnosed for sleep disorders at a much lower rate than men. Women in the military were expected to have lower rates of sleep apnea than their male counterparts; however, women in the military were not expected to have lower rates of insomnia diagnoses. "This conflicts with the rate of insomnia diagnoses among female veterans and in civilian women, which are higher," he said.

A 2017 Department of Veterans Affairs study published in Women's Health Issues showed that more than half of female veterans reported in a postal survey that they have insomnia. "We were not expecting to find that women are potentially underdiagnosed for insomnia while they are on active duty," Dr. Mysliwiec said. "This is a concerning finding. We will need to conduct more research to better understand what contributes to the potential underdiagnosis of insomnia in active-duty women."

Long deployments

Study co-author Alan Peterson, PhD, added perspective to the large number of Army personnel who were diagnosed with sleep disorders. "While military deployments were not evaluated in this epidemiological study, previous research has shown a strong correlation between deployments and sleep disorders, and deployments combined with other chronic health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury," he said.

"In the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there were longer and more frequent deployments between 2008 and 2012. The Army typically had the longest and most frequent deployments -- 21 months -- compared to 12 to 16 months for the other services," he explained.

"While we don't know yet exactly why Army personnel were more likely to be diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea or insomnia, another factor besides deployments could be that Army personnel have greater access to large medical centers, which are typically located on Army posts. In contrast, Marines rely on Navy medical facilities that may not be where they are serving," Dr. Peterson said.

"Another factor that could have influenced the results is that the Army was the first service to institute a service-wide education program on military sleep practices. Having greater access to medical facilities and the Army's emphasis on education about sleep disorders may have resulted in more soldiers recognizing their sleep disturbances and seeking appropriate treatment," Dr. Peterson said.

"Overall, this study provides a comprehensive overview of the two most common sleep disorders in the U.S. military and contributes to sleep research that opens the door to learning more about the causes for these diagnoses. This will lead to more targeted prevention strategies and more effective treatments," added Dr. Peterson, professor of psychiatry, chief of the Division of Behavioral Medicine and director of two national military PTSD research consortia based at UT Health San Antonio.

Risks of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection for long-stay nursing home residents were mainly dependent on factors in their nursing homes and surrounding communities, according to a large study led by a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

By contrast, the study found that the risks of being hospitalized with, and of dying from, COVID-19, depended more on patient-specific characteristics such as age and body mass index--although the mix of factors linked to hospitalization was distinct from the mix of factors linked to mortality.

The study, which appears online March 31 in JAMA Network Open, detailed COVID-19 risk factors among more than 480,000 long-stay nursing home residents in the United States between April 1 and September 30, 2020. The study is thought to be the first national study of long-term nursing home residents in the U.S.

"Our findings suggest that the dynamics of the pandemic work differently in a nursing home setting than they do in the wider community," says study lead author Hemalkumar Mehta, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School. "The findings should help community leaders and nursing home administrators in devising better protections for nursing home residents during the remainder of the COVID-19 pandemic and in future pandemics."

Among the roughly 30 million recorded cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, there have been more than 500,000 deaths. Of those U.S. deaths, about one-third have been in nursing homes. These facilities have been especially vulnerable to COVID-19 due to their concentrations of frail, elderly residents.

Even so, the COVID-19 case, hospitalization, and mortality rates have varied greatly among nursing homes.

For their study, the researchers used Medicare data to identify a cohort of 482,323 long-stay nursing home residents, aged 65 and up, who had not yet been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of April 1 of last year. The cohort included residents at 15,038 nursing homes across the U.S.

A total of 137,119 residents (28.4 percent) were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection during the period April 1 through September 30. The researchers found that the risk of infection was dependent mainly on which nursing home the resident lived in, and in which county, rather than patient-specific factors.

When accounting for the influence of local factors, the large nominal differences in infection rates between whites and Blacks, whites and Asians, and whites and Latinos went virtually to zero.

Among the personal characteristics examined, only body mass index, a gauge of thinness or obesity, appeared to be important in determining infection risk: Having a BMI greater than 45 ("morbidly obese") was associated with 19 percent more infection risk than having a BMI in the normal range of 18.5 to 25.

The risk of hospitalization varied more with personal factors. A BMI of 40-45 was associated with 24 percent greater risk, and a BMI over 45 with 40 percent greater risk, compared to a BMI in the normal range.

Frailty and poor health appeared to be factors too. Residents with severe functional impairment were 15 percent likelier to be hospitalized when they got COVID-19; and those who had to use a catheter were 21 percent likelier.

Ethnicity/race was a big factor in hospitalization risk, even when adjusting for nursing home facility and geography. Asian nursing home residents, for example, were 46 percent more likely than whites to be hospitalized when diagnosed with COVID-19.

Somewhat surprisingly--and contrary to the results of prior studies outside nursing homes-- factors most associated with hospitalization risk appeared to have a lesser role in mortality risk after controlling for differences among nursing homes. Asians were more likely than whites to die when they got COVID-19, but only 19 percent more likely. Moreover, Blacks and Hispanics had no significant difference in mortality risk compared to whites.

Again surprisingly, BMI was not a significant risk factor for mortality--except for those with a BMI below the normal range, who had a 19 percent greater risk of dying when infected with COVID-19.

Older age was the largest apparent mortality risk factor. For example, being over 90 was associated with 155 percent greater risk, compared to being 65-70, and even being 81-85 brought a 76 percent increase in mortality risk compared to the youngest age bracket of 65-70 years.

Cognitive impairment was another mortality risk factor--severely impaired residents were 79 percent more likely to die of COVID-19 than those with no cognitive impairment. Similarly, severe functional impairment was associated with a 94 percent greater chance of mortality.

Male residents were 57 percent likelier than females to die when they had COVID-19.

On the whole, according to the researchers, the results suggest that hospitalization and mortality risks, which normally go together for people living at home, were somewhat disconnected in the nursing home setting, at least under the unusual circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This may represent resident or family preference to avoid hospitalization, triaging decisions when local hospitals were full, or other factors yet to be determined," Mehta says.

One bright spot in the data, the researchers note, is that the mortality rate dropped dramatically during the study period, from 29.9 percent in April to 15.8 percent in September.

What did the ancestor of all bacteria look like, where did it live and what did it feed on? A team of researchers from the Institute of Molecular Evolution at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has now found answers to these questions by analysing biochemical metabolic networks and evolutionary trees. In the journal Communications Biology, they report on how they can now even infer the shape of the first bacterium.

Roughly five years ago, Institute Head Prof. Dr. William (Bill) Martin and his team introduced the last universal common ancestor of all living organisms and named it "LUCA". It lived approximately 3.8 billion years ago in hot deep sea hydrothermal vents.

Now the evolutionary biologists in Duesseldorf have described a further ancient cell named "LBCA" ("Last Bacterial Common Ancestor"). It is the ancestor of today's largest domain of all living organisms: Bacteria. In Communications Biology, they report on their new research approaches which led to the successful prediction of the biochemistry of LBCA and its phylogenetic links.

Bacteria are almost as old as life itself. LBCA lived around 3.5 billion years ago in a similar environment to LUCA. In order to unlock LBCA's genetic code, its properties and its story, the research team examined the genomes of 1,089 bacterial anaerobes or bacteria that survive without oxygen. "Abandoning aerobes made sense for our work", explains first author Dr. Joana C. Xavier. "If bacteria originated at a time when the Earth was anoxic, it does not make sense to investigate their origin considering species full of adaptations caused by oxygen."

Higher life forms pass on their genetic code from parent to offspring via vertical gene transfer. As a result, the genome provides information on phylogenetic history. But bacteria are masters in another form of gene transfer, namely lateral gene transfer (LGT). This allows bacteria to exchange genetic information across different strains. This posed a major challenge in reconstructing the LBCA genome, as it renders the traditional phylogenetic methods incapable of inferring the root in the bacterial evolutionary tree.

For this reason, the researchers in Duesseldorf used biochemical networks together with thousands of individual trees. They investigated 1,089 anaerobic genomes and identified 146 protein families conserved in all bacteria. These proteins make up a nearly complete core metabolic network.

To complete LBCA's biochemistry, just nine further genes had to be added for the reconstructed metabolic network to include all essential and universal metabolites. To be fully independent and self-generated, LBCA's network would still require further genes inherited from the last universal common ancestor, LUCA, and nutrients from the environment.

With LBCA's metabolic network in hand, the authors then used statistical methods to determine which of the modern bacterial groups are most similar to LBCA. They did this using a method called Minimal Ancestor Deviation, MAD, previously developed by one of the co-authors, Fernando D. K. Tria: "The analyses revealed that the earliest branch of Bacteria to diverge was most similar to modern Clostridia, followed closely by Deltaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria and some members of Aquifex. In common, these groups have the acetyl-CoA pathway for carbon fixation and/or energy metabolism."

Prof. William Martin, senior author of the study, explains: "This is the only carbon fixation pathway present in both archaea and bacteria and that traces to LUCA. This result, obtained independently, is also in line with our most recent findings on the origin and early evolution of life in hydrothermal vents."

"We can infer with confidence that LBCA was most likely rod-shaped", says Xavier. "If it was similar to Clostridia, it is possible that LBCA was able to sporulate." This hypothesis was recently laid out by other researchers "and is highly compatible with our results", says Xavier. Forming spores would allow early cells to survive the inhospitable environment of the early Earth.

Sugar practically screams from the shelves of your grocery store, especially those products marketed to kids.

Children are the highest consumers of added sugar, even as high-sugar diets have been linked to health effects like obesity and heart disease and even impaired memory function.

However, less is known about how high sugar consumption during childhood affects the development of the brain, specifically a region known to be critically important for learning and memory called the hippocampus.

New research led by a University of Georgia faculty member in collaboration with a University of Southern California research group has shown in a rodent model that daily consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages during adolescence impairs performance on a learning and memory task during adulthood. The group further showed that changes in the bacteria in the gut may be the key to the sugar-induced memory impairment.

Supporting this possibility, they found that similar memory deficits were observed even when the bacteria, called Parabacteroides, were experimentally enriched in the guts of animals that had never consumed sugar.

"Early life sugar increased Parabacteroides levels, and the higher the levels of Parabacteroides, the worse the animals did in the task," said Emily Noble, assistant professor in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences who served as first author on the paper. "We found that the bacteria alone was sufficient to impair memory in the same way as sugar, but it also impaired other types of memory functions as well."

Guidelines recommend limiting sugar

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a joint publication of the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services, recommends limiting added sugars to less than 10 percent of calories per day.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show Americans between the ages 9-18 exceed that recommendation, the bulk of the calories coming from sugar-sweetened beverages.

Considering the role the hippocampus plays in a variety of cognitive functions and the fact the area is still developing into late adolescence, researchers sought to understand more about its vulnerability to a high-sugar diet via gut microbiota.

Juvenile rats were given their normal chow and an 11% sugar solution, which is comparable to commercially available sugar-sweetened beverages.

Researchers then had the rats perform a hippocampus-dependent memory task designed to measure episodic contextual memory, or remembering the context where they had seen a familiar object before.

"We found that rats that consumed sugar in early life had an impaired capacity to discriminate that an object was novel to a specific context, a task the rats that were not given sugar were able to do," Noble said.

A second memory task measured basic recognition memory, a hippocampal-independent memory function that involves the animals' ability to recognize something they had seen previously.

In this task, sugar had no effect on the animals' recognition memory.

"Early life sugar consumption seems to selectively impair their hippocampal learning and memory," Noble said.

Additional analyses determined that high sugar consumption led to elevated levels of Parabacteroides in the gut microbiome, the more than 100 trillion microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract that play a role in human health and disease.

To better identify the mechanism by which the bacteria impacted memory and learning, researchers experimentally increased levels of Parabacteroides in the microbiome of rats that had never consumed sugar. Those animals showed impairments in both hippocampal dependent and hippocampal-independent memory tasks.

"(The bacteria) induced some cognitive deficits on its own," Noble said.

Noble said future research is needed to better identify specific pathways by which this gut-brain signaling operates.

"The question now is how do these populations of bacteria in the gut alter the development of the brain?" Noble said. "Identifying how the bacteria in the gut are impacting brain development will tell us about what sort of internal environment the brain needs in order to grow in a healthy way."

LAWRENCE, KANSAS -- The phrase "to see red" means to become angry. But for investors, seeing red takes on a whole different meaning.

William BazleyThat's the premise behind a new article by William Bazley, assistant professor of finance at the University of Kansas.

"Visual Finance: The Pervasive Effects of Red on Investor Behavior" reveals that using the color red to represent financial data influences individuals' risk preferences, expectations of future stock returns and trading decisions. The effects are not present in people who are colorblind, and they're muted in China, where red represents prosperity. Other colors do not generate the same outcomes.

The article appears in the current issue of Management Science.

"Our findings suggest the use of color deserves careful consideration when it's to be used on financial platforms, such as brokerage websites or by retirement service providers," Bazley said. "For instance, the use of color could lead to investors avoiding the platform or delaying important financial decisions, which could have deleterious long-term consequences."

Co-written by Henrik Cronqvist at the University of Miami and Milica Mormann at Southern Methodist University, the article demonstrates how evolutionary biology and social learning are what creates this color-coded behavior. With regards to Western culture, it's possible that social learning has reinforced biological underpinnings. Specifically, the physical and psychological context in which color is perceived influences its meaning and human responses to it.

"In Western cultures, conditioning of red color and experiences start in early schooling as students receive feedback regarding academic errors in red," Bazley said.

Red is associated with alarms and stop signs that convey danger and command enhanced attention. Other examples include when California issues a "Red Flag Warning" that signals imminent danger of extreme fire or when the American Heart Association uses red in its guidelines to indicate hypertensive crisis (a blood pressure reading higher than 180/120) that necessitates medical care. Over time, repeated pairings of a color with negative stimuli can influence subsequent behavior.

In regard to finance, Bazley was most surprised to find how red color appears to prolong pessimistic expectations in relation to negative stock returns, while viewing the same information in black or blue leads to reversal beliefs.

He said, "This suggests the use of color may have broad implications for stock market liquidity during times of crisis and the momentum anomaly."

Their research also drew on other examples outside the financial community where colors influence choice. An emerging field called color psychology analyzes how this affects human behavior. Bazley cites a 2005 study in the publication Nature that argued the color of sportswear may influence outcomes in the Olympics.

"Much like our everyday choices, our financial decisions are likely to be shaped by factors which are not specific to the decision at hand. This can be due to a variety of reasons, such as limits to our attention. Ultimately, it suggests that incorporating aspects of psychology when studying financial decision-making is likely to yield insights," said Bazley, whose "Pervasive Effects" research is based on eight experiments with a total of 1,451 individuals.

He emphasized this particular project originated in a neuroscience course during graduate school. The research also benefited from the varied expertise of Mormann, who is a visual scientist, and Cronqvist, a behavioral finance expert.

Bazley's interest in color effects relates to his overall study in the dynamics of financial decision-making.

"Our everyday choices are shaped by a multitude of factors," said Bazley, whose expertise incorporates behavioral and social influences and fintech.

"A similar process plays out when we make our financial choices. We are still at the early stages of understanding these dynamics, but learning about them has the potential to yield insights that could ultimately improve the outcomes individuals realize from their decisions," he said.

So what is Bazley's favorite financial term involving the color red?

"I appreciate the phrase 'red herring,'" he said.

"In finance, it refers to a preliminary prospectus that a company uses when issuing securities to the public. It is an important document for potential investors, but it tends to omit key pieces of information; hence, it usually has a red disclaimer on the front. I also find fish to be delicious."